MFF 2015 REVIEW: NINA FOREVER

MFF 2015 REVIEW: NINA FOREVER

By Tom Fuchs

 

Image courtesy of Jeva Films

 

I’ve talked ad nauseam in the past about how genre cinema (and specifically the horror genre) is afforded the unique opportunity to smuggle metaphorical meaning into their stories in the midst of prurient thrills (sometimes a chainsaw isn’t just a chainsaw), combining entertainment and meaning in a way that no other type of film can offer.  And I can’t overstate how much respect I have for any genre film that doesn’t belie these underlying metaphors over the course of their movie for the sake of said thrills, a truly unenviable task.  Take the wonderful Nina Forever for example: it would’ve been remarkably easy for co-writer/directors Ben and Chris Blaine to take their premise (every time a young man and his new girlfriend begin to have sex, his dead ex-girlfriend gorily erupts from the bed sheets underneath them) in an action-packed direction where the new couple have to find a way to brutally dispatch with this unwanted specter of past relationships or where the dead ex herself is a more malevolent presence throughout.  Instead, the Blaine Bros. rightly realize that the story is simply about the baggage we all bring to each new relationship and the myriad ways we attempt to navigate without it bringing us to our knees.

 

Holly (Abigail Hardingham) is drawn to her grief-stricken co-worker at the supermarket, Rob (Cian Barry).  After losing his girlfriend to a car accident and unsuccessfully attempting suicide, Rob spends his time avoiding a return to the land of the living; his thesis remains unfinished, his motorbike gathers dust and the only relationship he maintains is a weekly dinner with his ex’s grieving parents.  Holly, 19 years young and studying to be a paramedic, sees this brooding and anguish as a turn-on, his suicide attempt proof of an unwavering devotion she naively wishes would be directed towards her.  So goes their tender courtship, begun on the false pretenses of a million broken relationships that have come before, only to be interrupted by the blood-soaked arrival of Nina (Fiona O’Shaughnessy), Rob’s dead ex, whenever they initiate sex and seemingly unwilling to relinquish her hold over Rob (when informed of her deceased status, she cagily replies “That doesn’t mean we’re on a break, does it?”).

From Nina’s first gory emergence in this most intimate of moments, the film toes a razor-wire line of remaining funny, upsetting and sexy without ever going off the tracks. Holly decides she’s willing to work with this intrusion, first trying to incorporate Nina into the proceedings (add it to the illustrious list of cinema’s most awkward threesomes) and then seeking to obliterate any trace of her from Rob’s life (books, photographs, clothing).  It’s not surprising none of these palliative measures rid them of their emotional albatross, but you may prove surprised by how the film finally settles this triangle, even as the Blaines cannily had been sowing the seeds of their finale from the very start. 

It’s smart about its central relationships, aided no doubt by all three lead performers doing very fine work.  Hardingham and Barry strike a wonderfully awkward yet sexy chemistry when paired together, and O’Shaughnessy does an amazing job embodying a character that is either witheringly sarcastic or lacking any emotion whatsoever depending on your perspective.  The film is also aided by a writing/directing duo that is clearly in control of their cinematic faculties, managing a tonal minefield without a misstep.  They manage to tell their story in purely cinematic terms (there’s a cut that explicitly defines a relationship that drew a huge laugh from the audience that’s told solely through music and image) and stick the metaphorical landing, and I look forward to seeing whatever they come up with next.

MFF 2015 REVIEW: EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT

MFF 2015 REVIEW: EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT

By Tom Fuchs

Image courtesy of Oscilloscope

 

Less than a minute into Embrace of the Serpent, you’re greeted with a whopper of a shot: our lead character, the native shaman Karamakate, standing at the very edge where rainforest and river meet - nearly blended into his surroundings, the sumptuous black and white cinematography combining with the perfectly still water to create an effect not unlike an infinity room where vegetation grows in all directions in perpetuity.  This kind of image is the sort of thing conjured up by Director Ciro Guerra and DP David Gallegro in abundance throughout their picture, an astonishing snapshot of lush life among the indigenous that will take your breath away.  It’s unfortunate that the story they house these wondrous feats of visual poetry in isn’t quite their equal.

 

This isn’t to say the story itself isn’t satisfying, if only in fits and starts.  Loosely based on the travel diaries of two actual explorers (the German Theodor Koch-Grunberg and the American Richard Evans Schultes, of whom a quick Wikipedia glance would clue you into their narrative trajectories) and their journey in search of a mythical plant, the yakruna, which may or may not actually exist.  Their two journeys take place thirty years apart, the connective tissue being the aforementioned shaman.  The last of his tribe, he is believed to be the only extant person with the knowledge necessary to track down this sacred vegetation.  Thus, with Karamakate in tow, the two men venture into the heart of darkness, their stories bleeding together like tributaries in the river of time.

 

The film makes no attempt to hide its influences – a bit of Aguirre here, a dash (or more) of Apocalypse Now there, even a conclusion that harkens to 2001.  And while it never quite reaches the dizzying heights achieved by those peak-level cinema events, it has a seductive and hypnotic quality all its own. Perhaps my narrative issues were exacerbated by the encroaching colonialist threat only ever being spoken instead of felt, with imagery so naturalistically oppressive it doesn’t support the thesis* that man could ever conquer the environment that envelops him.  But it’s a minor pittance in a movie of constant exquisite beauty and infrequent narrative inspiration, one that may prove utterly transfixing if you allow yourself to be swept up in its current, ever downstream.

 

*Emotionally, that is.  Intellectually, I think we’re all well aware of man’s – specifically white entitled man – capability and long history of destroying any and all in the way of his material gains.